Insight from London, England

The Union Jack seems unique among national flags to truly capture an essential feature of the people it represents. It is in fact three flags stacked on top of each other: the English cross of St. George sits as the undeniable foundation, with the crosses of Saints Patrick and Andrew of Ireland and Scotland, respectively, superimposed. It’s as if when a hurried official came suddenly into some room in Westminster and said, ‘we need a flag to represent the newly created United Kingdom’, someone replied, flummoxed, ‘uhhh…ummm…could we just put them on top of each other?’ It’s the kind of creativity one imagines contributed to the naming of towns and cities up and down the East Coast of the United States: Worcester, New York, New Hampshire, New Haven, New Jersey, Plymouth…‘It’s not worth fussing over’, says the credo, ‘let’s go with what works and get on with it’.

The British are famed for not wanting to make a fuss and it is probably the one national stereotype that actually holds true. Of course, there are a million ways to define Britishness, and many would say it doesn’t exist at all. According to some, you’re either English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish – you may even be Cornish! How could one word describe all these people when their accents are so different? Whatever. For the time being, these nationalities are in it together, whether they like it or not (and chances are they don’t).

But for all the fuss about not being fussy, lots of people around the UK are in a hissy over a great many things at the moment. Most notable are the upcoming referendum for Scottish independence and an in-out referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union should the Conservative Party win re-election in 2015. If the Scots leave the UK and the UK leaves the EU, what will the Union Jack look like then?

As it turns out, exactly the same. The Scots would still have the Queen as their head of state and the EU has nothing to do with the flag, to everyone’s great relief. But once the cardinal rule of Not Making A Fuss is so completely contravened, how well can the quintessentially makeshift flag represent a country which in its new incarnation will have taken a lot of deliberate, determined effort to remake?

Not very. The 1707 Act of Union – when Scotland became part of the United Kingdom – prompted the creation of the Union Jack. The country was on the up. Ahead of it were over two-hundred years of global imperial dominance unknown to any other power in history. The Roman Empire is a joke compared to what the British achieved. In the 18th and 19th centuries, then, the Union Jack, insofar as it represented the essential qualities of the British people, was a projection of their country’s glory. In cities and ports around the world, the sight of the flag inspired admiration, respect, loathing, and on more than a few occasions it inspired fear. Regardless of the message, what is inarguable is that it mattered.

But if the Scots choose independence and the rest of the UK stumbles belligerently out of the European Union, it will mark a turning point for what the Union Jack represents. Not only will the purportedly least fussy country on the planet show itself to actually be rather high maintenance, it will also be an undeniable marker of decline. Pockets of the UK will be very nice places to visit—‘castles countryside, old churches and more!’ –but, on the whole, the country will matter less and be poorer.

As an American living in the UK and married to a Briton, but still roughly five years away from UK citizenship, it’s debatable whether my opinion matters. All the same, here’s to hoping the Union Jack still matters once I do take the hallowed vow of Not Making a Fuss, whatever the phrase has come to mean by then.

~~~~~

Jeffrey P. Lupo lives in London and intends to practice law in England and Wales. He graduated from the Jackson School in 2010. Jeffrey is the co-founder of the Jackson School Journal of International Studies.

Insight from Washington D.C., U.S.A.

Guess what I did for my birthday this year? Courtesy of the Jackson School (JSIS) and  the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), I received an all-expenses paid trip to Washington D.C., an opportunity to participate in a conference on “Diversity in International Affairs,” and a chance to meet some great students and professionals working on fascinating projects around the world.

It was my first time in D.C. and I was a bit worried about navigating my way through a new city, especially since I had an appointment to meet with a JSIS alum at the Chamber of Commerce within an hour after my plane landed. Navigation turned out to be pretty easy—a little thanks to the fact that most U.S. downtowns follow a similar pattern (and some thanks to Google of course). D.C. seemed similar to most American cities on the surface but I know from experience that real differences between cities begin to stand out once you start living in one longer than a few weeks. Cultural differences, especially, are not a monopoly of foreign countries but are very much present within countries as well.

On this trip I got my first dose of East Coast versus West Coast office culture starting from the minute I began debating what would be appropriate to wear. Kelly Voss, from JSIS Career Services, helped by making the difference much easier to understand when she told me, “Cardigans are the blazers of the West Coast!” As one speaker after another at the conference stressed the importance of having more diversity in the workforce I looked around at the audience and smiled. In spite of small differences in dressing, there was an overall uniformity of sorts—the dominating business culture at work, which also extends to other parts of the world partly as a result of colonization and globalization.

 A girl with the same last name as mine (but spelled differently) came up to me and asked if I was from Pakistan. Surprised, I said yes and asked her how she knew. She stated as a matter of fact, “Oh that’s how the Pakistanis usually spell Chaudhary. In Bangladesh we use a ‘w’ instead.” I was just as fascinated by this little tip as I had once been when someone told me that one way to tell if a woman was Indian and not Pakistani was by the design of her shalwar! My years living in South Asia, or studying it, had never provided me with these interesting bits of information. I guess many such distinctions and markers become more relevant when one is outside one’s own country.

 Whenever we meet new people, especially at events like conferences, we end up representing our schools/organizations to some extent. In addition to that, those of us who have grown up abroad tend to be representatives of our respective countries too, whether it be in the way we conduct ourselves–defying or reinforcing stereotypes– or in the form of direct questions people ask about our country’s culture, politics, geography and so on. I always enjoy talking to people about Pakistan and the more I am asked to describe it the more I become aware of how hard it is to explain seemingly simple things, like “what an average meal is like” or “what people do for fun,” simply because often there is so much socio-economic, ethnic, and cultural diversity even within a country that it is not easy to pinpoint an “average.”

Coming back to D.C.—walking around the city I did some typical touristy stuff, I met up with old friends, and I ended up having to wait to cross the road till President Obama’s cavalcade passed by on the way to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. As people around me took out their phones to make videos, I grumbled to my friend about how I felt like I was back in Pakistan with the road blocked for some VIP. Granted that this was a much quicker and more efficient process but, at the end of the day, it only reminded me that no matter where you go in the world some things never change.

~~~~~

Nabeeha Chaudhary is an M.A. student in the South Asian Studies department in the Jackson School. She grew up in Lahore and Karachi and studied at the University of Karachi for more than two years before transferring to Miami University where she completed her B.A. in English Literature. Her current research interests revolve around Media, Education, and Gender Disparities in South Asia with a focus on Pakistan.

Nabeeha wrote a previous blog post for JSIS Correspondence about being in Karachi to visit friends and family and to collect material for her M.A. project on the representation of women in Pakistani television serials.

Insight from Shanghai, China.

It’s easy to get lost in Shanghai, virtually and psychologically. My first memories of Shanghai are the bright lights that illuminate its skyline at night, pedestrians piling every street and corner, and the endless rows of cars racing back and forth across lane lines. With skyscrapers on nearly every block, the city itself is a labyrinth and it’s nearly impossible to not lose one’s way. However, one can also get lost in another sense as we indulge ourselves in Shanghai’s modernity, wealth and fast lifestyle.

Surrounded by luxuries of every kind, it is easy to completely forget about China’s record of human rights abuses, flawed legal system, and income inequality. It is easy to overlook the people living in the margin of Shanghai’s advancements. Behind the tall skyscrapers are run-down tenements that are easy to miss as we instead gape at the unique and innovative designs of modern architectures.  Beyond the façades of high GDP growth and fancy restaurants is a stark underside: people living in the margin of Shanghai’s advancement, normal citizens barely eking out a living, struggling to keep up with the growth of modern Shanghai.

The Bund is perhaps Shanghai’s most popular tourist attraction. Tourists and locals alike crowd the walkways to catch a view of the beautiful skyline in Pudong, Shanghai’s financial district. Cameras flicker every other second as families and friends pose for pictures with the infamous Oriental Pearl Tower in the background. The lively environment can easily allow one to overlook the young migrant workers that fill the benches of the Bund after ten PM. These workers, usually youths in their late teens and early twenties, came to Shanghai from rural areas to look for work. However, they soon find that work is not so easily found nor is housing in Shanghai very affordable. They also face legal challenges as China’s hukou system (a household registration system) makes it nearly impossible for migrant workers to gain residency in another city after leaving home. Even university students like my language partner from Hubei cannot attain a Shanghai hukou. The rigidity in the system leaves room for much inequality.

One of the most unforgettable conversations that I had in Shanghai was with a professor. This professor teaches Political Science. Having recently taken a class on Chinese politics and governance at the UW, I was excited to consult this professor and to hear his perspective on matters pertaining to Chinese governance. Everything he told me was more or less what I expected to hear, but hearing it from someone who lives and works in China gave me a very fresh perspective.

The professor was candid and acknowledged the flaws in the Chinese systems. He told me stories of his colleague being arrested for conducting a research around AIDS patients, a subject considered too sensitive for Chinese officials. Fortunately, this colleague was released on bail, though not without extensive warnings from the government.

Then there is the notion of quantity over quality. I told the professor that from my experience in Shanghai, I grasped a sense that ‘face value’ seems to matter more than the actual intrinsic value. This is especially apparent from the contrast between outdoor and indoor lighting. Skyscrapers and many shopping buildings were covered with gorgeous lights on the outside of the buildings, yet many buildings that I’ve entered are dimly lit on the inside. In Seattle, it was the exactly opposite. Our skyscrapers are rarely lit aside from the light emanating from offices.

The professor confirmed my theory that the Chinese value ‘face’ or ‘mianzi.’  He told me that such was the same in the Chinese education system. Chinese students are required to take an excessive number of classes every semester, with some taking up to 8 to 10 classes.  The rationale for this, according to the professor, is because of the perception that the number of courses students take represents the wide range of knowledge that students are required to learn. However, many of these students are overloaded with work and do not have time to build comprehensive understanding of any subject matter. Consequently, according to the professor, breadth without depth can do more harm than good. Students leave their classes without substantial knowledge of the subject.

This conversation with the professor showed me the underlying problems in China’s education system, one that is rarely portrayed in Chinese media. Of course, while the professor is more educated than the average Chinese and had been educated in the United States, which had substantially influence his perspective on these matters. The average Chinese citizens, on the other hand, are not as concerned as they are too busy concentrating on making ends meet. This group includes my co-workers at my internship. They epitomize the average Chinese who are neither at the higher tier nor the lower tier of the income strata.

~~~~~

Binh Vong is a junior in the International Political Economy track of the Jackson School of International Studies and is also majoring in Political Science and Chinese. She is currently a member of the Jackson School Journal Editorial Board.

This past summer, Binh studied Business Chinese at Shanghai Jiaotong University and interned at China Telecom through a Columbia University administered program.

Insight from Bangkok, Thailand.

A peaceful, weekday morning in the heart of Bangkok and I am actually cool and refreshed with the windows wide open, in spite of the 32°C mid morning temperature. Outside the proximity of birds chirping, the clinks and clangs of pots being washed in the downstairs apartment, the splash of water as someone hoses down a car or cleans a driveway, and the murmurs of voices between neighbors conveys a feeling of routine peacefulness. The tuk-tuks, motorcycles and bustle of Pahol Yothin Road are a very distant sound and hardly disturbing. I am back in Thailand after a three-year hiatus due to my own administrative responsibilities and time constraints (and not due to any diminished desire to remain engaged with colleagues and friends in Thailand).

On this first morning, with some trepidation (bred by memories of the overwhelming, chaotic energy of Bangkok), I ventured out to the main road in search of coffee. In years past, walking out to the main road of any Bangkok neighborhood meant steeling oneself for the onslaught of sidewalk vendors, motorcycle cabbies’ entreaties, and speeding cars that brushed so close to the walkways that pedestrians sucked in their breath with each passing car in the hopes that would buy them a bit more space and avoid injury. This time, while I had geared myself up for the onslaught as I approached the main road, I was surprised at how easy it was to time my street-crossing without fear, how each passing car moved by slowly (and quietly), and how the pace of a weekday morning seemed slower and quieter. Almost peaceful!

Finding my way to a coffee shop, a sweet and pleasant exchange with the coffee shop’s barista ensued – [in Thai] “Oh! You speak a little bit of Thai!” Me – “Not really, just a little bit.”  Barista – “Why?  Do you live here?” Me – “No, no.  I am just one of those people that comes and goes frequently.” — Then, I made my way back to my apartment with a cup of iced coffee in hand and settled down to read the Bangkok Post. The sense of changed atmosphere from my morning walk was reinforced when I read the story under the headline – ‘Top cop enters Thai PBS fray.’ Despite the seemingly aggressive headline, the news story struck me as a markedly thoughtful and comprehensive account of a major shift in public, political discourse that would have been unimaginable six years ago during the Thaksin administration or even 20 years ago, when I first arrived in Thailand in 1993. In brief, Tob Jote Prathet Thai (Answering Thai Questions) is a talk show and documentary that is intended to present balanced perspectives on a wide array of challenging issues. In a five-part series broadcast on the Thai Public Broadcasting Station (Thai PBS), the show examined the “Monarchy Under the Constitution.”

The ‘fray’, mentioned in the news headline, emerged as a result of the abrupt cancellation and then re-broadcasting of the last segment of the series. The segment was dedicated to a debate about the role of the monarchy in Thailand and the airing of the segment fed a furor that swirled around the legal concerns codified in section 112 of the Thai constitution, often referred to as Lese Majeste. Coinciding with the front-page story was a back page guest columnist essay by Songkran Grachangnetara that describes clearly the multi-sided standpoints and the possibilities of a continued monarchy that might be held above the political fray and thereby allow for balanced debates about the role of the monarchy. It’s a remarkable claim.

What surprises me about these front and back page stories are the thoughtful, frank, but careful ways that Thais are searching for and trying to create discursive space that allows them to continue to honor their monarchy, celebrate traditions, move towards less divisive politics and political turmoil, maintain hard won ground for progressive and transparent governance, and address human rights concerns. However, I am cautiously optimistic and imagine a uniquely Thai solution in the near future.  It remains to be seen whether my optimism about a Thai solution that overcomes divisions is well founded, especially as the monarchy faces an imminent transition. However, my optimism is rooted in what I discovered as I dug beneath the surface to see where else these debates were occurring. It doesn’t take much research to see that these particular news items were not momentary blips on the media screen, but represent ever-widening circles of thoughtful discussion across many sectors of Thai society.
Links that might be of interest.

1. Council on Foreign Relations, Asia Unbound

2. Kevin Hewison for New Mandala

3. Global Voices Online

4. Prachatai’s blog

5. The ‘Tob Jote Prathet Thai’ series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

~~~~~

Sara R. Curran is a Professor in the Henry M. Jackson School for International Studies and the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs. She is also the Chair of the International Studies Program, the Director of the Center for Global Studies, and the Associate Director for the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology.

Insight from Bucharest, Romania.

It’s hot. It’s so hot I can’t breathe and I wish this taxi had air-conditioning. I never wish for air-conditioning but all four windows are wide open and I still feel like I am suffocating. It is so bright outside that the industrial buildings stretching from the airport to Bucharest city are white-washed, bleached as if my eyes are a camera, set on over-expose. The driver is smoking and talking on his phone and looking over his shoulder at me at the same time. He has the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Walking through the airport I was struck over and over again by blue, blue eyes and dark, dark skin. Later at my hotel I will Google “blue eyes Romania.” I end up in a rabbit hole of stories about blue-eyed Arabs, and dating sites for men to meet hot young Romanian women, conspiracy theorists talking about blue-eyes sometimes being a dominant gene instead of a recessive one, and a Wikipedia article about how Estonia’s population is 99% blue eyed.  I scour the television stations to catch sight of these blue eyes again. But the airport is the only place I see them.

I am in Bucharest, Romania for two weeks to work for the secretariat of an international environmental treaty on wetlands, biodiversity and climate change–the Ramsar Convention. It is their triennial COP, or Conference of the Parties, where delegates from about 153 different countries come together to negotiate environmental policy, which they will then take home with them and implement.

In the taxi I remind myself that the areas around airports are always ugly–that what I am seeing is not going to be indicative of what the city or the rest of Romania will be like. I’m right. As we drive down the Bulevardul Regina Elisabeta I see towering old buildings; buildings that rival places I have seen in Paris. Except these buildings are crumbling and covered in graffiti–colorful spray paint and ancient gold rooftops. The taxi driver is giving me the scenic tour. I have a feeling that this is going to cost me, but I am just glad I didn’t have to take the bus.  At the airport the idea of figuring out public transport in this heat seemed staggering.

The taxi driver decides I need a tour guide. I speak English, Afrikaans, and very basic French and Persian. He speaks French, Italian, broken English and Romanian. He keeps trying to tell me about the buildings we see in Italian. I just shake my head and smile. Parks and crumbling megaliths pass by me. The heat is unbearable but it begins to feel good to my heat starved skin. I’m surprised that no one honks at us. This man drives with a cigarette and a cellphone and rarely has a hand on the steering wheel. I keep smiling. I wonder who he is talking to.  I can’t tell if it’s me, or the person I can hear on the phone. It doesn’t seem to matter to him.  He keeps talking, mentioning the Pentagon, wildly, waving his hands and veering into oncoming traffic.

At the hotel I pay the taxi driver 150 Ron, three times what my ride should have cost. I sleep all afternoon and straight through the night. The next day I sit at the registration desk in the Palace of the Parliament, where we are holding this summer’s COP. The secretariat staff is small, and at the conference is expected to take on many different jobs and roles. It is the host country’s responsibility to pay for the meeting, and to supply extra volunteers.  One of the Romanian volunteers, a man of 20 has been smiling at me all morning. Finally he works up the courage to sit down next to me. He asks me where I am from and what I’m doing here. We talk about school. He is studying law at the University of Bucharest. He had to pull strings to get an invitation to work at the COP. He wants to work for the government. I soon learn from the volunteers that everyone in Romania wants to work for the government. It could just be that I have a biased sample, but it reminds me of an article I read at home about Morocco and how the children of the country’s elite all have government jobs waiting for them when they graduate. I think of growing up in South Africa. There is something about the chaos and bizarre dichotomy between rich and poor, first world Lamborghinis and third world poverty, I see here that I recognize. I feel oddly at home.

The volunteer is trying to tell me about Romania. I ask him about the people and he tells me about the gypsies. He says they are awful. They are an embarrassment to Romania. They are “welfare suckers.” I try to keep smiling and ask him what he means. I want to know what he thinks. Gypsies in my mind seem romantic. To Romanians they aren’t. I wonder if they are blue eyed. I ask him about the blue-eyed people. He says, “Oh no, those are fine.”

I have been having my ideas of ethnicity, national identity and race challenged constantly since leaving South Africa, where there were only two races, black and white.  I left South Africa and came to an America that perceived race in places I had never been asked to look, and now, here, to a country that defines race amongst people I can’t tell apart. Nobody in the government building has blue eyes. I am at a loss for how to ask about this.

I become uncomfortable talking to him.  Our conversation slowly fizzles out. He moves on to more interesting targets. He walks like an old man, and has the hunched back and the flat-pooched belly and the hands of an old man. He is the type of twenty year old that looks and behaves like he should be 80; his ideas about people and government are just as dated. I wonder about what will happen when he becomes a government official.

For the first few days of the conference the Romanian staff is running around us wheeling plants and flower pots, rolling out carpets and putting up signs. The bulk of the volunteers don’t arrive till three days in.

The secretariat staff is from all over the world. I am working next to an American woman who is in her 50’s and stands like a flamingo on one leg. She becomes our daily news broadcaster. We spend most of the duration of the conference talking about this building with its enormous foyers and vast wings of empty unused rooms. And its ghosts.

On the evening of the first night over drinks a co-worker tells me that the Palace of the Parliament, the grand, ornate building we are working in was only built 40 years ago. That it is the second largest building in the world, second only to the Pentagon. Suddenly I understand what the taxi driver had been trying to tell me.

It is as hot inside the building as it is outside. We are told over and over again that there is no air-conditioning in the building. We ask about the huge vents we see everywhere, and we apologize to the delegates that start to arrive en-sweating masse. The women I work with and I sit and gossip with an intimacy that is forged by close living and working quarters.  Between registering 800 delegates and observer parties, we fan ourselves desperately with pamphlets meant for delegates, we fight over rationed pens that keep going missing. Languages snake past me at lightning speed. The convention works in three languages so as a rule most of the staff speak two and often three. But the delegates speak thousands, and all day snippets of conversation drift by me. The staff alters their language according to whom they are speaking to, and I sit and listen to stories in French and Spanish. I blink every time someone speaks to me in Romanian. It takes us a few seconds to realize I don’t understand what they are saying.

One of the French women working with me tells me she hates this building. She talks about the 80’s and watching the video of Elena and Nicolae Ceaușescu’s execution, which was aired on national television. She is upset at having to work in a building that is so symbolically linked to them. The American woman tells me about how a friend had to escape Romania during the 1980’s, leaving her family behind  never to be seen again.

Most of Bucharest’s architecture is made up of buildings built during the Communist era and the Palace of the Parliament, in all its ornate marbled splendor, is no exception. Nicolae Ceaușescu demolished huge portions of the historic center of Bucharest in order to construct it. He literally razed the previously historic sections of the city and built his Paris of the East from scratch in his project of systemization.

I now understand what the taxi driver had been pointing at, during my very expensive and unsolicited guided tour. Tens of thousands of houses had been destroyed. Later that night, walking to a supermarket in search of snacks a co-worker explained that in the 1980’s 40,000 people were evicted with only a day’s notice as he razed an 8 square kilometer area, as part of his redevelopment scheme. Back when the world was divided in three. Back when I was born. A whole twenty-six years ago. His ghost is still here, in this building,  in this city, and amongst us, people from far away places and distant time.

As the days and the heat blur together and conversations snippet in and out around me, I feel like time starts to resemble a stop animation film, and I am constantly trying to puzzle this place together. Slowly, like drip filtration I become aware that there is something else happening in this building. There are parts we aren’t allowed to access, that contain the seat of government. On the second day, the American woman announces that there is going to be a coup. That the current president Traian Basescu is being ousted by Prime Minister Victor Ponta over allegations he had abused his powers. We suddenly find we are unwitting participants in this drama, by simple accident. Every now and then a lost politician comes in the wrong door and walks past us, at one point Basescu and Ponta are standing in front of me shaking hands. Angela Merkel walks by me.

Everything starts to get very exciting. In between long days of work, and the political dramas in the convention itself, we are riveted by what is happening in the building around us.

Information comes to us in bits and pieces, some of it is nonsense, and some of it is accurate. It takes time to sort out which is which. It’s impossible to find English news in Romania. You can watch Xena the Warrior Princess on repeat and Chuck Norris movies and old American television. There is CNN Europe, but everything is happening so fast that it seems like the rest of the world hasn’t caught on yet. Locked in the building all day working we don’t really now what’s happening outside, there are reports of burning buildings which turn out to be standard house fires, student uprisings, which turn out to be small and talk of a coup d’etat keeps resurfacing.

Being a part of what happens and trying to understand it at the same time is very difficult. The only source of information we have is an opinion piece by Paul Krugman in the New York Times.  I think about a class I took with Ellis Goldberg on the Arab Spring and realize this is what he was talking about when he described being in Cairo at the start of the Egyptian uprising.

The next day we learn that it is not a coup after all, but that the parliament has voted to impeach President Traian Basescu.

On my final day I have some free time. The volunteer, who first told me about gypsies also told me that the video of the Ceaușescu’s execution was available on YouTube if I was interested. I had politely declined. But, I go see their graves though in a final bid to my morbid curiosity. I want to say goodbye to this person who’s building I have been hosted in, who’s streets I have walked in and who has left such a strange legacy behind.

The final evening is hot. We wonder the old town district and seek tables in the vast oceans of outdoor seating, between thick clouds of smoke and faces of all ages and expensive cars and taxis and gypsies and beautiful, beautiful Romanian women. There are Gypsies everywhere. I think about South Africa again in relation to this new democracy also still dealing with the vapors of its past. A lot of it is very similar and then a lot of it is not

It will take time for me after leaving to put all this information into perspective and I will finally relent and watch the video. It is sad and hollow, and leaves me feeling intense grief, for both the atrocities committed by Nicolae and Elena, but also for the horrific way in which they died. The narrator uses a quote by Karl Marx at the end of the video, and it seems fitting; “Men make their own history but they do not make it as they choose.”

~~~~~

Rachel Brown is a Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations major and Editor for the Jackson School Journal of International Studies.  She is also the Assistant Director for the Odegaard Writing and Research Center. In her spare time she is a certified mediator working in Washington state.

Rachel has worked with the Ramsar Convention for the last two Conference of the Parties, in South Korea and in Romania. The next one will be in Uruguay. Rachel grew up in South Africa and moved to the US in 2008. She will graduate from UW in 2014 and intends to spend her senior year at the Sciences Po in France studying Arabic and French and completing her thesis.

Insight from Álora, Spain.

Looking at a map of the Guadalhorce watershed, I traced the blue line of the river through the towns dotted along the valley. The water in this valley provides life and livelihood to this region of Southern Spain, serving as a source of irrigation for agriculture and drinking water for many small communities and the large, coastal city of Málaga. The river has served these purposes since the time of the Romans, when the region of Andalucía was developed as a breadbasket for the growing empire. The Moorish civilization continued to develop the water infrastructure by building elaborate canals, some of which are still in use today. These systems have lasted for centuries, but today as aridity increases in Southern Spain, the traditional allocations of water and the rural culture it supports are under pressure to change.

Water has a subtle but constant presence in the political conversations of Spain. Over my two months abroad, almost every newspaper that I picked up had an article about water. El País, a major national news source, chronicled drought in the interior, the increasing salinization of wells and the politics of water allocation. Though the discussions rarely made front-page headlines, the controversies over water governance are growing as Spain looks toward a future of scarcity. Water connects everything from the lemon groves of the Guadalhorce to the global politics of the Spanish debt crisis, and climate change and an unforgiving global economy is forcing the Spanish government to grapple with setting some new priorities.

When it comes to lawmaking, the Spanish statute has codified a hierarchy for national water allocation. Officially, drinking water is prime, followed by irrigation, industry and ecology. This simple principle, though touted as a logical precept, gives little consideration to the historical and cultural value of water. Debates emerging over water governance are not simply economic concerns, but rather a national conversation about the values of maintaining rural and agrarian traditions in the face of growing cities and urban water requirements.

In the Guadalhorce watershed, the Junta de Andalucía (the state-level government) is charged with creating regional water distribution plans that reflect this hierarchy. Some years, there is plenty of water, yet the farmers and low level officials all know that those years are becoming fewer and farther between. The question for governance then becomes a delicate one. When there simply is not enough water to fulfill all of the needs, which one’s are really the most important? Whose needs should be served first?

According to the national hierarchy, the growing urban demand for drinking water in Málaga takes priority, decreasing the amount available for the small towns and farms in the interior. A region already suffering from the economic crisis, a decrease in water allocation (and subsequent harvest and profits) would make many families in this region hard-pressed to remain in the country. Such an allocation might drive rural communities to abandon their lifestyles and head for the growing metropolises, leaving their centuries of customary life behind them. The traditional knowledge of the region might fade and the typical orchards of lemons, oranges and olives would gradually disappear. The people of the Guadalhorce have already started to migrate into the urban sprawl surrounding Málaga or other larger cities and it is quite possible that the people in this region would slowly lose their connection with this land.

Many in the Guadalhorce are painfully aware that this social and cultural change is already beginning. Over my time in Álora, a small citrus farming community, the contest between drinking water and agriculture was clearly charged by the threat of loosing access to a traditional lifestyle. Almost as an act of passive resistance, many small irrigators have refused water-saving irrigation technology and continue to use the traditional, method of flood-irrigation in an effort to preserve their culture. At the same time, in all of my conversations with irrigators and water managers I expected to hear some remark about the wasteful use of water in Málaga. Large hotels and the swells of three-showers-per-day tourists in the summertime were the most common complaint, but I could tell that the real concern for these farmers was simply that the state was starting to give up on them. The priorities have shifted to the city and the cultural benefits of small town life are being quietly forgotten..

In terms of sustainability, the problem that Spain faces is really a challenge of choosing what to sustain. Should the government maintain support of these agriculturalists in an effort to maintain a cultural heritage? In a water-scarce world where you can’t have it all, it is important that all governments begin to consider how to value culture and tradition in water resource use.

On the 19th of July, the headline of the New York Times read: “Severe Drought Expected to Worsen Across the Nation.” I put down the paper, thinking about the climatic realities that connect us all… and about their widespread consequences. Higher food prices and increasing rural poverty, forced migrations, economic shocks and cultural change. Water connects everything and the USA will grapple with many of the same challenges that Spain faces in the coming years.  Our country and much of the world will have to adapt to a new resource reality, being mindful of the cultural, social and economic implications of changing water governance. Although I do not pretend to have any answers about what should be sustained or how this might be achieved, I do know that when it comes to water we must consider culture and identity very strongly in any change in policy.

~~~~~

Sarah Boone is a senior in the Peace, Security and Diplomacy track of the Jackson School of International Studies and is minoring in Environmental Studies. She is also writing an honors thesis on water scarcity and conflict resolution in the Middle East. She is the current Editor-in-Chief of the Jackson School Journal.

Sarah was in Spain at the UW León Center.  She was enrolled in a program focused on water and especially on the operation of public policy, law, and customary practice as forces that shape how water is used and understood. For the first few weeks of the program, students reviewed case-study literature on water governance from around the world and studied Spanish intensively. Following this, the class conducted fieldwork in the Guadalhorce Valley which was largely comprised of interviews with farmers and low level officials. The research was conducted in collaboration with a team from Wageningen University that specializes in water resources in this region. The UW study abroad program was lead by Professor Gregory Hicks (UW School of Law) and Katherine R. Kroeger (Office of Global Affairs).

Insight from Tel Aviv, Israel.

Sitting in the Betty White Café (that’s right!) in Tel Aviv, I have come to the conclusion that Israel is a highly schizophrenic society.  I am a couple of blocks from the beach, where the evening sunsets over the Mediterranean are breathtaking.  And all around me people seem to be enjoying life to the fullest.  They sit in cafés and bars until all hours of the night, sometimes spilling out onto the street in the warm summer nights long after midnight.  The restaurants are full—and they are expensive.  Cultural events are packed.  World recession?  I don’t see it on the streets of downtown Tel Aviv.  At the old Tel Aviv port, now converted into a happening place of shops, shows, and bikinis, traffic jams to get in last until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.  This is Barcelona on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean.

Much of the good life is fueled by the extraordinary high-tech boom here—every sort of silly software that you can imagine, along with serious bio-medical products that are changing the world health scene.  Young entrepreneurs drive fancy SUVs and have gorgeous apartments in the city.  Construction is ubiquitous, mostly of fancy office buildings and apartments.

And, yet, there is the other side of Israel that is obvious as I sit in Betty White and read the newspaper.  The government fell apart today over the issue of army service and national service.  Israel has universal conscription that is not so universal.   Most, but not all, Palestinian Israelis are exempt from the draft.  They make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population.  Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) Jews are another fifth or so of Israeli society, and most of them do not serve either, gaining exemptions for learning Talmud or, in the case of women, for their desire to maintain their modesty.  So about 40 percent of the population avoids service, which does not sit well with many who send their sons and daughters off to risky army service.  A commission appointed by the Prime Minister recommended extending at least national service, if not army service, to Arab and Haredis.  That seemed to point the way to a solution until the Prime Minister realized he might lose his Haredi partners in his governmental coalition.  So he dissolved the commission.  Problem solved.

National service was not the only issue tugging at the seams of the government—and of society.  The protest movement of last summer—tents in the middle of Tel Aviv’s swankiest neighborhood—has returned with a vengeance.  Saturday night, I came to a dead stop two blocks from my apartment as protestors blocked Tel Aviv streets.  Israel vies with the United States for the top spot (or is it bottom spot?) on the list of most unequal industrialized countries.  Clearly, the packed cafés mask a worrisome poverty among those who live outside the high-tech bubble.  The protests do not seem to worry the country’s elite too much yet, but they could become serious.  This is a serious outcry, in a formerly socialist country, against the unfettered effects of neo-liberalism.

And this list of woes does not even include the occupation of the West Bank.  Here, in Tel Aviv, that occupation seems so far away.  But, in reality, it is less than an hour’s drive to the occupied territories.  The sons and daughters of the Tel Aviv elite, along with those of the poorer sectors of society, have to enforce that occupation.  And that enforcement eats away at the fabric of society.  Negotiations with the Palestinians that might bring the occupation to an end do not seem to be on the horizon, despite this week’s visit and exhortations by Hillary Clinton.  A solution, though, seemed to appear this week.  Yet another government commission reported that the occupation never really existed.  Everything that Israel is doing (and has done) in the West Bank are perfectly legal.  Alas, such dubious conclusions do not hide the fact that the sons and daughters have to man checkpoints and round up Palestinians.  No serious solution to that problem seems remotely near.

I guess that Israel lives with the schizophrenia like other societies do.  But here the starkness between the beautiful people of Tel Aviv and the ugliness of the occupation are particularly dramatic.  One can sip iced tea in Betty White while writing on a MacBook Air about state-society relations and momentarily forget about inequality and occupation.  But the truth is that, while the problems Israel faces may be hidden, they are having a corrosive effect on life here.

~~~~~

Professor Joel S. Migdal is the Robert F. Philip Professor of International Studies in the University of Washington ‘s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.

Insight from Berlin, Germany.

Living in Berlin, a city caught up in a selective forgetting and remembering of the physical past, it is not hard to stumble across something with a hidden or little-known history. On July 20th, a few classmates and I went exploring in the city, and came upon the Memorial to the German Resistance, also known as the Bendlerblock. The Bendlerblock is better known through the context of Operation Valkyrie; the area was used as the headquarters for the Wehrmacht officers who carried out the July 20 plot against Adolf Hitler. General Olbricht, Colonel von Stauffenberg, Werner von Haeften, and Albrecht Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim were executed by firing squad in the courtyard of the building for conspiracy. Currently, the courtyard is home to the Memorial to the German Resistance.

On the afternoon I stumbled across the memorial, a crowd of German police and official cars lined the street around the entrance, while several dozen older Germans surrounded the entrance gate, watching a ceremony within. I approached the gates and watched the processions within; German military forces laid wreaths around the memorial statue, while relatives, German elite and officials sat in rows before the memorial plaque. Being the 20th of July, I had stumbled across the 67th anniversary of the attempt to assassinate Hitler. Ceremonies took place throughout Berlin and across Germany on the 20th, in remembrance of German resistance fighters. German Federal President Christian Wulff, Bundestag President Norbert Lammert, Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière and other officials participated in the wreath-laying ceremony at the Bendlerblock, and a later service was held at Plötzensee Memorial Center, where the Nazis had tried, imprisoned and executed thousands of resistors. At the end of the day, in tradition, new soldiers took ceremonial oaths in a ceremony in front of the Reichstag.

I had arrived at the end of the ceremony, and after a few minutes of wreath-laying, I was able to watch the glamourous procession of German statesmen, as they left the memorial flanked by secret service agents. Those of us watching from outside the gate were let into the memorial after the bulk of important figures had left, walking into the stark courtyard where the final nametags were being peeled from the rows of chairs. Aside from the center statue and a few plaques to the resistance, the courtyard was nondescript, not as momentous as the ceremony would lead one to believe. This has been true of my experiences in Berlin; the city draws very selective attention to its past. Much of my experience here in Berlin has led me to view the city as one caught up in forgetting- not outright silencing the past, but certainly attempting to tuck it away. A motto I have while traveling is certainly true here in Berlin: a city is understood best through what you can’t see.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Elizabeth Cook is a Jackson School International Studies major.

Elizabeth traveled to Berlin during Summer Quarter 2011 as part of an Exploration Seminar.